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4

Lol, I have learned to write with a typewriter. Wordprocessors are just great.
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Toon KrijtheNov 18 '10 at 21:00

Not exactly an answer, but I imagine the ideal software for writers would be a plugin to Word (and/or OO Write) that adds features. Most of what's useful is already there.
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MGOwenNov 18 '10 at 23:21

MGOwen: I disagree. For a person like me who's running a pretty craptastic laptop, Word takes up a lot of resources and tends to lag my system a bit. Not a big deal when I'm writing a paper for a class, but if I'm working on a long-term personal project, it's too bloated to be practical. I love Word, but an editor like yWriter really is better suited to writing.
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MaulrusNov 20 '10 at 15:28

The biggest problem with fancy word-processors like Word is that it is too easy to waste time mucking with fonts, styles, line spacing, etc. instead of actually writing content.
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JohnFxJul 8 '11 at 6:07

1

As you can tell from all the answers, there's a lot of software out there, and at least as many opinions. No one software is the "ideal", "right", or "best" software. It depends on what you're trying to write, what your hardware/software platform is, what your preferences are.... It's quite a personal choice!
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Mark BeadlesFeb 2 '12 at 17:40

25 Answers
25

I've been using Scrivener, which is available as a free beta for NaNoWriMo participants.

It's a writer's project organizational tool that allows you to have many different associated files, and to view more than one on the same screen. For example, you could open a file about a particular character while writing about them, have an outline open while you work on non-fiction, etc. You can also move pieces (smaller files) around easily to rearrange parts of a work. When you're done, you can compile your manuscript to multiple formats: plain text, Word, et cetera.

The Windows version is currently available as a beta, as well as an upcoming Mac version. Until recently, Scrivener was only available for Macs.
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JohnnyNov 18 '10 at 22:47

2

To add to why Scrivener's helpful: it allows you to have many different associated files, and to view more than one on the same screen: for example, you could open a file about a particular character while writing about them, have an outline open while you work on non-fiction, etc. You can also move pieces (smaller files) around easily to rearrange parts of a work.
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Jennifer ArnottNov 18 '10 at 22:53

I recommend yWriter. Free, easy to use, all the features you might want, free, and pretty compact. And it works on OSX and Linux under Mono.

Also it's free.

To elaborate on its features: It allows you to divide a story into chapters and to subdivide those chapters into scenes. In each scene, you can keep track of what characters are in the scene, where it takes place, what time of day it takes place; pretty much every conceivable detail is an option.** If you really like organizing down to the most minute bits of information, yWriter is a good idea for you.

** I'm sure it has more features, but to be honest I've never explored it that much.

Can you elaborate on this answer a bit? (From your description, I thought it was just a barebones word processor. When it got upvotes, I checked the site and was surprised to discover it has writing features like "scene" organising).
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MGOwenNov 22 '10 at 23:56

I use emacs, editing LaTeX files, with a text editor I am used to (as in 20+ years "used to"). This has some advantages and some disadvantages. It allows me to separate text in whatever "file chunks" I find convenient (usually chapters) and allows me to re-arrange these in the document as a whole (by having a series of include statements, referring to the chapter).

It allows me to generate decently-typeset output in the end. I also have some conversion tools that allows me to generate other formats. However, it does not fit well with any publisher's work-stream and this is a potential problem for the future.

If you don't already have a substantial amount of time invested in a specific tool, I have heard good things about Scrivener (as in, it allows you to do the things I find to be a "win" with LaTeX+text editor, with "integrates better with publishers" as a big win).

+1, I almost use the same set-up and also for the work-stream problem you'll get (but if you publish something yourself using a printing-on-demand service, you'll be fine).
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Marcel KorpelNov 19 '10 at 13:39

Over time I have found the only way to write in an uninterrupted flow from beginning to end is to write the thing as a text file in the text editor of choice (Notepad is perfectly suitable). Mucking about with notes organisers and chapter defabulators and character combobulators as I'm writing the actual novel itself just slows me down. However I spend months and months and months on notes beforehand so by the time I sit down I'm literally fishing the thing out of my head as if I'm recalling it rather than trying to create it fresh.

It's an approach rather than a bells and whistles laden killer app, sure. But I thought a luddite view might provide counterpoint.

Writer's Café is a set of power tools
for all fiction writers, whether
experienced or just starting out. The
heart of Writer's Café is StoryLines,
a powerful but simple to use story
development tool that dramatically
accelerates the creation and
structuring of your novel or
screenplay.

Writer's Café also
includes a notebook, journal, research
organiser, pinboard, inspirational
quotations, daily writing tips,
writing exercises, name generation,
and a 60-page e-book, Fiction: The
Facts, distilling 20 years of writing
experience.

Runs on small laptops such as the Eee
PC - Windows and Linux.
Writer's Café is designed to be a
playground for the imagination, making
writing fiction fun and fulfilling.
But it's also a serious tool for
professionals, with highly
configurable formatting, import/export
and reporting facilities.

I've tried many of the things mentioned above, but they never really worked for me. I have a tendency to get distracted by the shiny. So, when writing at my computer instead of with my fountain pens or typewriter, I use Pyroom.

Pyroom is a free, open source editor with no bells and whistles. It runs in fullscreen mode only, providing you with an eye-strain easing green box of text on a black background. The colors, box dimensions, font, and autosave behavior are configurable, and that's it.

I use Freemind (also free and open source) to manage my notes. Keeping them on separate desktops, I can shift back and forth as needed without getting distracted when I'm writing in Pyroom.

I write in Markdown, because it's easy to deal with in plain text mode and does not distract me from my writing. I put together a script to translate from Markdown directly to LaTeX for when HTML isn't my target output, and may add other formats down the road. I do use Markdown Extras to get support for footnotes, fenced code blocks, definition lists, etc.

It depends on what you're writing. For example, if you are writing screen plays (or even stage plays), Final Draft Pro is absolutely the way to go.

When I'm working on prose, I do tend to just use my standard word processor of choice (Microsoft Word 2010 on Windows, 2011 on Mac), but I keep my notes, timelines, outlines, etc. in a series of OmniOutliner documents -- think a combined outliner and spreadsheet, and you pretty much get the gist. (And also, you'll probably figure out why it's so darned useful while writing!)

I use Scrivener for most of my writing. I see some have touched on it already, but I think Scrivener deserves an explanation, because it is truly a great piece of software (and even though it isn't free, the price isn't that hefty, either).

Scrivener is a writing tool that is great whether you write short stories, novels, scripts and even essays or scientific articles. One of the big features of scrivener is that you can organize the project however you want, by chapter, by scene, anything. In the end, when you are ready to export, it all comes together into a single text.

You can append all the research files you need to the project, for fast in-application reference. You can add labels, status and even your own meta-data to separate pieces of text, so you have a say on how it all will be sorted.

You can have two parts of text viewed side-by-side, for comparison or reference, you can even have that second chapter in the same window where you are just writing chapter nineteen, because their events are closely linked - all without any copy-pasting.

I find Scrivener a very streamlined piece of software for writers and am happy with it. I use it for almost all my writing.

Just for clarity's sake, I think you shouldn't have posted this as an answer, but simply upvote Johnny's one and add a comment there about the availability of the software.
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Marcel KorpelNov 18 '10 at 21:37

There are many tools you can use, as listed above, though in the end the best thing to use is what works for you. Try out what looks good and see if it helps you out. If something gets in the way of your writing it can't be to helpful, can it?

Myself, for many years I used TextPad to do all my writing in. Useful application that did plain text and did it very well. Over the last couple of years I've been moving to Word 2007, mostly because it has a homogenize checker, something that is still a problem for me.

Tinderbox (pricy but powerful) for planning story arcs and other details - I'm a very visual thinker and I like something where I can build rich structures, more than with simple tools like Freemind

Instaviz for sketching out little diagrams of relationships whilst I'm on the move, on my iPhone,

StoryMill for fiction writing, a competitor to the Scrivener tool recommended in other answers.

But, the most powerful tool I'm using right now is Evernote because it lets me write little inspirations, scenes and ideas on any of my systems including my iPhone and iPad and they are all synchronised. I also collect all my odd snippets of research in there using the web clippings - the fastest way to grab a portion of a web page along with the URL and a reasonable amount of formatting.

OmmWriter is my favorite. It's a full-screen editor similar to Writeroom, but is designed to inspire creativity. It has calm backgrounds you can choose to see behind your text, as well as music that helps you zone out and get your writing flowing. I personally really enjoy writing in it. Runs on Windows and OS X.

Ommwriter is a simplistic editor designed to improve your concentration. It's is available on Mac, PC and iPad. There's a free version and a paid version for the desktop, although I believe the iOS version is paid only,
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MosheAug 19 '11 at 12:35

I have found Dramatica useful, and I tend to use Final Draft for my work. However, I think any word processor you're comfortable with is good enough - applications that assist you in tracking your notes and story are more important than writing app itself.

Mac users should take a look at Ulysses, in addition to the other Mac writing tools mentioned in this thread. They offer a 60-day trial that's fully feature-enabled. They just dropped the price significantly, too.

Scrivener seems nice, but wasn't the right fit for me; it seems to be designed primarily for long-form fiction. The Ulysses interface is simpler and seems more generalized. For example, I started keeping several journals in one Ulysses project using collections, and it fits pretty well for that purpose.

All that said, as a developer geek, I'm not sure that anything beats plain text files using an editor that you're already comfortable with.

You might like to take a look at PangurPad, it is a web based full-screen editor for creative writing that has all of those features you ask about: keeping track of story timelines, characters and notes etc. It also keeps all of your writing backed up automatically with a cool auto-save feature. I've been using it for two weeks now and it's fantastic. It is very new though but you can sign up for free to try it.

I would recommend Xiosis Scribe. Its got all the features I need in one app. Mind mapping, research, lots of time saving features in the editor and content separation from layout. It can also be configured to work like Dark room and can manage your document better than Scrivener.